From this past April… For those reading my series recapping Bethel’s Pietism colloquium, let me encourage you to look at something Jay Phelan wrote yesterday on his blog, Additional Markings. His post begins: I had reason again this week to be thankful that I am a Pietist. For reasons buried deeply within Vatican paranoia the … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Pietism vs. the “Imperial Church”
“If it’s so easy, let’s see you do it” will be an eminently fair response to this post, offering as it does a suggestion for how to give speeches or preach sermons at college commencement or baccalaureate exercises from someone who’s done neither. Here goes… It’s been a commencement-filled weekend for me: my own university’s … More Sent Out to Serve, and Suffer
I doubt he’d remember, but I first met G.W. Carlson in March 2002. Neither of us could have guessed that ten years later I’d be helping to make this movie about him: Back to March 2002… I had just turned in my dissertation and was in town for my brother’s wedding. We grew up in … More Commencement: A Tribute to G.W. Carlson
Today I’ll recap the third of my three talks delivered on May 5-6 for Salem Covenant Church’s annual family camp, in the northern Minnesota woods at Covenant Pines Bible Camp. The overriding theme was to encourage Christian non-historians to approach church history with the same zeal that many of them apply to family history. I … More Church History as Family History (part 3)
I don’t even know how to begin to explain this: Okay – first, I’m co-coordinator of GES130 Christianity and Western Culture (CWC), a course on Western Civilization, church history, philosophy, and theology that about two-thirds of Bethel students take in their first year. In addition to a team of 8-10 professors, the course is taught … More My MTV Unplugged Moment
5/14/12 – If you weren’t able to attend the Inaugural Bethel Colloquium on Pietism Studies last month, you can now listen to the three main sessions on iTunes U! The talks by Scot McKnight and Jon Sensbach, plus the roundtable discussion of Pietism in churches today, are all available for free download in podcast format. … More Pietism Colloquium on iTunes U
Today I’ll come back to my series on Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation, eds. John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller (University of Notre Dame Press). I should reiterate that I read the book alongside my students in HIS499 Senior Seminar, the capstone course for History majors at Bethel University. … More Confessing History: Theory and Method
Today I’ll continue my recap of the series of talks I gave last weekend for Salem Covenant Church‘s annual “family camp,” held up at Covenant Pines, outside McGregor, MN. They concerned the topic, “The Family History That Most Christians Don’t Know, But Can’t Ignore: Three Biblical Tools for Understanding Church History.” In the first part … More Church History as Family History (part 2)
As I mentioned here Monday, I spent last weekend presenting a three-part talk on church history to fellow members of Salem Covenant Church during our annual “family camp.” I’ll recap it in two three parts, starting today. Now, these talks are supposed to be “inspiring,” which is not a mode I normally think of as … More Church History as Family History (part 1)
Last night my family hosted the students in Bethel’s capstone course for History majors. They turned in their research papers, shared a meal, tolerated my two-year old twins showing off all their tricks, and had one last seminar discussion together: on vocation. Since this course is almost entirely composed of students about to graduate, there’s … More Gladness, Need, and Calling: Frederick Buechner on Vocation
The Pietist Schoolman 